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CSMastermindtoday at 7:17 AM7 repliesview on HN

Microsoft has seemingly been in a slow but steady decline for 10 years now.

Really needs to be studied.

It's like they started making structural decisions a decade ago that are now overwhelming their ability to deliver basic functionality.

I realize there were always problems like this, I live through Windows ME, but it does feel qualitatively different now with advertising being forced into the product, performance of no consideration at all, etc.


Replies

samivtoday at 9:46 AM

In summary because:

  - They're beholden to Wall Street and stock price is the only relevant metric.
  - They've been laying off staff even up to senior/principal engineering levels. 
  - Shifting towards vibe coding instead of engineering.
Gonna get a lot worse still and things will continue to deteriorate until Wall Street picks up on the issues and thinks it'll start hurting their next quarter results. (And it's not going to happen since Windows is nothing but a quarterly result side note at this point)
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marginalia_nutoday at 9:06 AM

There's not really not much more room for Microsoft's consumer software to grow, but the next quarterly report must show black numbers, so the only way to stay profitable is to produce software in a way that is cheaper than the previous month.

Incidentally, neither a rigorous quality control process, nor a team of experienced engineers is particularly cheap.

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SloppyDrivetoday at 10:19 AM

[flagged]

niyazpktoday at 7:53 AM

Microsoft, Apple, Amazon ...

Root_Deniedtoday at 8:50 AM

It seems like that decline will continue until it affects their stock prices. There's effectively a bunch of perverse incentives at the decision making level in all major companies right now that disconnects them from customer/end users. Until that fundamental issue is fixed the enshittification will continue.

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lostlogintoday at 7:43 AM

> Microsoft has seemingly been in a slow but steady decline for 10 years

Sort of matching the decline of Intel too.

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dgxyztoday at 8:48 AM

All products seem to decline the moment the revenue model switches to monthly recurring. This is always contrary to the promise that they won't and that money will be invested in product improvements.

If you think it's bad now wait until they consolidate the rental PC market (Bezos and Nadella are all over that)

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